Thoughts on preparedness

When this winter started I thought we were prepared for the worst of it. Then about six weeks ago a piece of firewood that was cut to the long side of what would fit in the firebox found it's way into the stove in the middle of the night.  Not a problem if the person loading the stove is fully awake and remembers the longest dimension inside a rectangular box is from corner to corner, not front to back. The other unfortunate factor is our stoves door has a glass window in it. Worse yet it happened the night before a major cold front blew in. Now the bad part of the story. Pelenaka calls me at work the next day to tell me there is a big crack in the stoves window. She already called the local jotul dealer and they don't have one in stock and it will take a week to get one. No problem I tell her. call them back and see if they will sell us the one out of thier display stove. An hour later she calls me back to tell me they don't have a display of our stove, it was sold. My poor wife is now getting frantic. I have her call the dealer back and get the phone numbers for all the nearest jotul dealers. By the time she finds one, I'm out of work. I come home too exhausted to drive, just as it starts snowing. She hops in the car and drives seventy miles to the nearest dealer that will sell us the window from a display stove. By the time she gets home You can barely see the house three doors away, it's snowing so hard. Withing fifteen minutes the window was replaced and the stove fired up. Due to the temps outside being in the low teens, it took all night for the house to get to a comfortable temperature. We now have a spare window and set of gaskets stashed away in the attic. But, this all got me asking questions. What if the widow got broke during the brunt of a storm? During this incident, I could have walked over to the thermostat and just fired the furnace up. But, what if the power were out as often happens here during storms?

I took a walk through the house and started asking myself the What If? question as I went room to room. We no longer have a land line phone. My cell is older and is sometimes tempermental with battery life. What if somebody were hurt or the house was on fire during a storm and we couldn't call for help. I solved that problem. Pelenaka is a weather watcher to the extreme. She got a new Eaton weather radio for christmas. It features a USB charging port. Then I went and bought a universal phone charging kit that works off usb power. Now we can charge our phones or my stepdaughters ipods with the solar panel or crank on the radio. Last week one of my coworkers informed me, our store was closing out little power inverters that plug into a cars cigarette lighter. 90 watts of 120V AC current. Enough to charge the laptops, or even power small power tools or a sump pump. It too has a USB power port. I bought the last one for less than five bucks.

Yesterday at a local gun show, I picked up half a dozen P38 can openers. alot of what we store foodwise is in cans. It used to be, you bought a hand operated can opener and you were still using it ten years later. Now they are made in china and it seems we buy three or four a year. The P38's will be around in twenty if we don't lose them. That's the bad thing about thier size. Easy to lose. The good thing about thier size. There is one on every persons key ring that lives in this house.

My point to all this. We think to stockpile the firewood and the food. Shoot, we even have a full blown first aid kit we put together that even includes scalpels and sutures. However, we can't really call ourselves prepared until we've played out every possible scenario and prepared for those too. Tools aren't enough if we can't repair them when they fail. And they will fail right when we need them most.

Woods

Help needed from fellow history buffs

Last spring I picked up a new computer and lost a folder of links I was saving. Part of what I lost was all my links to mid 19th century suttlers. One place had authentic wheel caps for really reasonable prices. If anyone has links to suttlers they have done business with and have been happy, I would apreciate a link.

Thanks!

Woods

Merry Christmas and my best wishes for the new year

To all my loyal followers I want to wish a Merry Christmas and may the new year bring you success in whatever your endeavors may be.

Some of you may be visiting for the first time. Probably because I recently started following your blog. I spent several hours over the past few weeks looking at blogs of people who list similar interests in thier profiles. My purpose is to see what others are doing and learning what I can.

For those of you that are new reading here, here's the reason.

For years I attempted to get where I'm heading by working multiple jobs, and trying to do the homestead thing at the same time. I thought I could abuse myself for a time and get far enough ahead to be able to homestead full time. What I ended up doing is making myself sick enough to nearly kill the homestead dream entirely. You see when you work constantly you end up getting in situations where you are spending more than you make with the extra job. Then there is the damage you do to yourself in the process. Bad diet also became a factor in my case. Always being on the verge of exhaustion, I tried to solve the problem with caffiene, sugar and nicotine. Stimulants are OK, until you seriously hurt yourself. Now I find myself 47 years old, with diabetes, asthma, and arthritus in both legs.

Even though I meet the criteria to be considered legally disabled, I won't give up the homestead dream until the undertaker pats my face with his shovel. I also refuse to stop working, not yet at least. Odds are those of you most recently added to my list of followed blogs write about foraging wild foods, homemade old fashioned foods or natural herbal remedies. I've been ruminating on a new plan recently. More is to follow soon. So, if your stopping by for the first time, stop back now and again. We might just be in the same frame of mind.

Woods

A Kudos for Thompson Center Arms

I have to give a hat's off to Thompson Center Arms. Several months ago I picked up a TC Renegade at a local gun show. The gun was represented to me as being unfired and it was still in it's original box. There were also some accessories included. The gun was priced around $200 and the dealer was willing to move on the price. Too willing to move on the price. I figured I could sell the extras for around $50 if I had to. The stock alone would bring $100+ at auction, so, I figured an offer of $170 was safe. He took it and I made a phone call to a friend. He had seen it the day before and informed me it was without a nipple when he saw it. He also informed me that someone had cross threaded and messed up the nipple hole. sure enough I got it home and got a nipple wrench out. Pulling the nipple confirmed it was the same gun. Still it was a pretty safe buy.

Some further inspection revealed an issue with the lock. Everything seemed fine until the barrel was on the gun. Then the the half cock was too far forward to be functional. A quick call to Thompson Center was made. They informed me the lock was under warranty and to send it in. They wanted $85 to replace the bolster which would have solved the nipple problem. I sent in the lock and bought myself a couple nipples with oversize thread diameters from Cains. The oversize nipple carefully forced into the damaged threads succeeded in chasing them out to funtionality. A week after sending in the lock, it was back with a new style hammer which solved that problem. At this point I was ready to put the gun up for sale in an attempt to make a profit. Which was my original intent. Then my 14 yr old stepdaughter out of the blue asks if she can deer hunt with me. Well, she would need a gun. Heck, I have the perfect gun right there waiting for her. So off to the range to get it sighted in. It liked Maxi Balls over round balls and it didn't like tripple seven or pyrodex. Real black powder in fffg granulation got the ignition right.

Saturday we went hunting. At lunch time I told her to shoot the gun and we would reload with fresh powder when we came back. Well sometime in the last 15 minutes we were in the woods the new hammer screw was lost and the new hammer with it. Today I called TC again and talked to Tim in the service dept. A ten minute phone call got us a new set of parts at no charge sent via fedex They should be here in time for the princess to be back in the woods this weekend.

Quite a few companies could take lessons in customer service from Thompson Center Arms.

The Scot stikes again!

Yup! That's me. Born a mongrel with a strong scottish streak in my ancestery. Can you get any cheaper than me? Ebay has free listings this week, through today. We gave up internet at home due to the cost. Today is my day off. On the days I work, I stop at the local Coffee Culture for a coffee and muffin for two bucks. Every day I get my little card stamped to get my two free coffees. Today I sit in Coffee Culture listing stuff for free on ebay, drinking free coffee, and charging the netbooks and cell phones dead batteries on thier dime. Beat that for cheapness Woods

The seasons first fire

If it were autumn, I'd be talking about the wood stove. But, the weather has for the most part broken, so except for an occassional evening fire to ward off a little chill, the stove is done. We have also managed to put by most of a winters worth of wood for next year. No, the fire I'm talking about is coal and smoky with the smell of hot iron. About a month ago I found my long awaited forge blower. A Buffalo "Silent 200". Located practically in my back yard, it was well worth the $80 it cost me. Now the possibility of incliment weather won't stop me from forging metal. Back in the scrounged hair dryer days there was always the possiblity of electrocution in the back of my mind. Even though I've had it, my plate has been too full to do anything. Whenpeople start telling you about free firewood for next year, firewood becomes the priority. Well, today Pelenaka asked me for a second closet rod in her closet. I thought there was a pair of closet rod brackets in the hell box, but, I sure as hell couldn't find them. The shop is full of scrap pipe and dowels, but, no brackets were going to mean a trip to work on my day off. Then I tought, "hey wait woods, there's I pile of quarter inch round stock in the scrap pile". So a couple six inch pieces, flaten out and shape leaves on the ends, crank them around the anvil horn. a little twist to the leaves made them stand out slightly from the wall. which allows for some bend in the 3/4" dowel rod. well it worked. Not as pretty as I would have liked. Shortly after the first leaf was shaped the fire didn't seem to do what I wanted. Either the metal seemed not to heat, or it was getting so hot it was burning up. Being the first fire I was coking off alot of raw coal. Later when the fire was out, I found a clinker the size of a golf ball. Biggest one I've ever pulled out of the forge. To those that don't know. A clinker is a big chunk of impurities from the coal. They all melt out and settle to the bottom of your fire. When they form the wreak all kinds of havok with your fire. Doing things just like happened to me today. Even worse when you are trying to weld, which becomes impossible. Maybe my next upgrade will be a comercial firepot with a clinker breaker. Then you use the breaker to bust up your clinker and then it falls though and out of the fire. Or maybe, I'll figure out how to build one. I'm sure it was some blacksmith that built the first clinker breaker. Maybe I'll follow his lead. Woods

What is a hero?

I've pondered starting a second blog for some time now. I honestly feel as a country, no, make that a civilization, we have lost our moral compass. Part of the problem is how we define heroism. Those members of our society that deserve recognition as extrordinary. Somehow over the years we have come to look to wealth or fame as requirements to be a hero or heroine. Sorry to say in spite of a youth spent being forced to wacth "Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous", Robin Leach has never shown me anyone worthy of being called hero. Also, while thier are many fine personalities in hollywood, and many strong figures in the sports world, many as shown by Tiger Woods and Jesse James aren't really worth the effort expended upon them by our society. So, I have decided to point out fine examples of heros from the past. Men and women in my mind worthy of the term. So let me start with a fine example of what makes a hero in my mind. Eugene Bullard I came accross Eugene Bullard several years ago. I had just watched the WWI epic "Flyboys". The movie had a character that was an african american pilot flying for the french. The world not being the friendliest place for people of color in the early 1900's, I had to know if this was a real person or just Hollywood taking liberties with history. A quick google search showed the truth. What I found was a man. I mean a manly man, One worth showing our son's as an example of what is great. A man who took cicumstances and made them suit him. Not letting circumstance control his destiny. Facing death with and danger with courage. Doing the right thing in spite of great odds. Later living life as an average person and dying in obscurity, largely forgotten to history for most of us. I have to say, if I was fighting in the trenches or just standing on a street corner, Eugene Bullard was the type of man I'd prefer to have standing next to me. I've just asked my librarian to get me his biography, "The Black Swallow of Death". I will come add more when I'm done reading. Until then you can read more on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Bullard Woods